A

Short for Administrator. A user with extra technical privileges who does housework such as deleting pages and blocking vandals.

Anchor

An HTML term for code that lets you link to a specific point in a page, using the "#" character. You can use them to link to a section of a page.

B

Blanking

Removing all content from a page. Newcomers often do this accidentally. On the other hand, if blanking an article is done in bad faith, it is vandalism. If blanking is done to a vandalized brand-new page, it is maintenance, and the page should be deleted by an admin.

Block

Action by an admin, removing from a certain IP address or user the ability to edit a wikia. Usually done against IP addresses that have done vandalism or against users who have been banned.

Boilerplate text

A standard message which can be added to an article using a template.

Broken link

Also used: edit link, red link.

A link to a nonexistent page, usually colored red.

Broken redirect

Redirect to a non-existing page. These are listed at Special:BrokenRedirects and should usually be removed or redirected.

Bureaucrat

A user who has the ability to promote and demote other users to the positions of rollback and admin, and promote to bureaucrat.

Moving a page by taking the text of the page, and copying it into the edit window for the second page. Generally considered worse than the 'move page' option, because it causes the page and its edit history to be in different places. Cut and paste moves can be fixed by administrators.

To remove (de-link) a wikification of an article. This can be done to remove selflinks or excessive common-noun Wikification.

Diff

The difference between two versions of a page, as displayed using the Page history feature, or from recent changes. The versions to compare are encoded in the URL, so you can make a link by copying and pasting it - for instance when discussing a specific change to an article.

A page that contains various meanings of a word, and points to the pages where the various meanings are defined.

Double redirect

A redirect which leads to another redirect. Counter-intuitively, this will not bring one to the final destination, so it needs to be eliminated by linking directly to the final target page. Listed at Special:DoubleRedirects.

Dupe

Short for a duplicate article. Often used when identifying a duplicate page that needs to be merged with another.

E

Edit conflict

Two or more parties both attempt to save different edits to the same page at the same time. Usually if this happens you will be asked to re-make your edit into the newly modified page.

H

I

Internal link

Also used: wikilink

A link pointing to another page within the same wikia created by using the wikitext markup double square-brackets "[[" and "]]". These links usually show up as blue if they are working, and red if they are broken. Note that they do not have the arrow symbol characteristic of an external link.

Interwiki link

A link to a different Wikia community. Usually links a word or name to a page covering the topic in depth on another wikia. Also seen at the bottom of pages when the page is available in different languages.

J

K

L

M

Taking the text of two pages, and turning it into a single page. Also used for the combination of two wikias.

Mirror

A website other than Wikia that uses content original to Wikia as a source for at least some of its content. This is allowed under the CC-by-SA.

N

Namespace

A way to classify pages. Wikia has namespaces for the main content, pages about the project (which on many wikis will be in the main namespace), user pages (User:), special pages (Special:), MediaWiki pages (MediaWiki:) and talk pages (Talk:, Wikipedia talk:, and User talk:).

"Neutral Point of View", or the agreement to report subjective opinions objectively, so as not to cause edit wars between opposing sides. As a verb, to remove biased statements or slanted phrasing. As an adjective, it indicates that an article fits this idea of neutrality. Commonly used at Wikipedia, where NPOV is a primary policy, it is also a local policy on many Wikia communities.

A null edit occurs when an editor opens the edit window of a document then re-saves the page without having made any text changes. This is sometimes done as a lazy way to purge – to update the functioning of templates (which require articles containing them to be edited in order for any changes to take effect). Moreover, a null edit can more quickly populate the page being null-edited into a new category. The term also applies to making a very small, non-substantive change (e.g., removing an unneeded blank line or adding one) in order to get the article history to register a change, for the purpose of leaving an edit summary that responds to a previous one.

O

P

Piped link

A link where the displayed text is not the name of the target article. Such links are created using the pipe character "|" e.g. [[Target article|Displayed text]]. The pipe trick is a software feature that generates the displayed text for you in certain circumstances.

The project namespace is a namespace dedicated to providing information about a wiki. At Wikipedia, this is used to separate policies from encyclopedia articles. It is less commonly used at Wikia.

Protected page

A page that cannot be edited by all users. A page can be protected against anonymous users and new accounts, or against all users except admins. Often this is done to protect against frequent vandalism or to cool down an edit war.

S

Sandbox

A sandbox is a page that users may edit however they want. This is for users to experiment and gain familiarity with Wiki markup.

Section editing

Using the 'edit' links to the right of the page, one can get an edit window containing only part of the page, making it easier to find the exact spot where one wants to edit. Javascript is needed for section editing. You can turn section editing off in your preferences under the "Enable section editing via [edit] links" option.

Self-link

A Wikilink contained in an article that points the reader to that same article, e.g. linking Help:Contents in the article "Help:Contents". Such links are automatically displayed as strongly emphasized text rather than links, but the more complex case of a link which redirects to the same article is not, and should be de-wikified.

Skin

The wikia's overall layout and appearance. Currently, two basic choices are available: Wikia and Monobook, and the user can choose between them in Special:Preferences. All wikis display in the Wikia skin by default. Customizations to the colors and other details can be made in a personal css file, or, as an admin, by using Special:Themedesigner.

A very short article or page that essentially points the reader in the direction of another page. Used in cases where a normal redirect is inappropriate for various reasons (e.g. it is a cross-wiki redirect)

A way of automatically including the contents of one page within another page, used for boilerplate text, navigational aids, etc. Templates on Community Central can be used on any other Wikia (see Help:Shared templates for details).

A cute misspelling of "typo". Used as an edit summary when correcting typos.

U

Un-wiki

Going against the basic concept of a wiki. Usually saying that something is un-wiki means that it makes editing more difficult or impossible.

Userboxes

A small colored box which allows users to add small messages on their user page. Most people use this to share facts about themselves, such as their interests, hobbies, likes, and dislikes.

For more information about userboxes, check out the userbox template on Templates Wiki.

User page

A personal page for editors at Wikia. Most people use their pages to introduce themselves and to keep various personal notes and lists. They are also used to communicate with other users via the Message Wall or user talk page.

Deliberate defacement of pages on a community. This can be by deleting text or publishing nonsense, bad language etc. The term is often incorrectly used to discredit the views of an opponent in edit wars.

VfD

An abbreviation used at Wikipedia, meaning Votes for Deletion. This is one method users at Wikia might choose to decide which pages are deleted.

W

Watchlist

A set of pages selected by the user, who can then click on My watchlist to see recent changes to those pages.

Code like HTML, but simplified and more convenient, for example '''bold''' instead of <b>bold</b>. It is the source code stored in the database and shown in the editor in source mode. Searching by the MediaWiki software is done in the wikitext, as opposed to searching by Google, which is done in the visible text. The size of a page is the size of the wikitext.